In recent years, people are becoming more health conscious and have taken up running and walking as a convenient and effective way to exercise. There is also an increased interest in self-tracking of daily activities through wearable sensors. Hence there is need for a step counting device that can accurately record a wearer's gait status as well as the number of steps taken.
Conventional step counting devices that use accelerometer(s) typically require the user to first position the device in a limited set of orientations. For example, the user has to secure the device on their body such that a dedicated axis (i.e. a direction of the device) is substantially and continuously aligned with the direction of the gravitational force throughout the measurement period.
Existing devices are typically unable to detect changes or differentiate signals that correspond to different gaits of the user, resulting in an incorrect count of the steps taken. Motion noises experienced by the devices will also cause false steps to be measured and actual steps to be missed in existing step counting devices.
Also, as the forward and backward swing of a body part to which the device is attached is not same for every step, existing devices are typically unable to correctly identify peaks as a step count due to the inconsistencies in the signal peaks and troughs.
Embodiments of the present invention provide a system and method for activity monitoring that seek to address at least one of the above problems.